Students invent quieter leaf blower

https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/05/14/quieter-leaf-blower/

by namanyayg • 2 years ago

280 418 2 years ago

hub.jhu.edu

maven29• 2 years ago

Can't be quieter than a rake.

xxs8• 2 years ago

Unless you stumble on it. Other than that - leaf blowers are not used only in gardening work.

huhtenberg2• 2 years ago

Yep, it's invaluable for getting your BBQ grill really going.

sidewndr467• 2 years ago

I've noticed roofing crews use them to remove old shingles. It must work pretty well, if they are dealing with carrying them around on the top of a house.

TOMDM• 2 years ago

If these truly sound that much better I'd personally buy every gardener in a 3 block radius one of these myself just to get rid of the bloody gas ones.

xxs8• 2 years ago

That is battery (li-ion) powered, so it's already quieter to begin with.

noobcoder• 2 years ago

Would love to know what neighbourhood you live in so that I dont have to get it for my gardener

mikeyouse• 2 years ago

Many affluent areas have already banned gas leaf blowers and it’s incredible how quiet the battery powered replacements are. I was in Palm Springs recently and had nearly walked past a landscaper using one before if occurred to me just how quiet it was - didn’t even interrupt our conversation. I believe it was a Stihl backpack version (maybe https://www.stihlusa.com/products/blowers-and-shredder-vacs/...) but yeah, highly recommend!

sidewndr467• 2 years ago

It isn't so much the noise that bothers me, what I've never understood about leaf blowers is what are they meant to accomplish? When I watch people use them they either blow the leaves into the street or the neighbors yard. What do they think that does?

Now on the other hand, I do own a very noisy leaf vacuum. But when I've collected a bag full I can just deposit the leaves in my collection container. They are taken off to be composted

sgarland2• 2 years ago

There are problems with battery-powered tools (at least, leaf blowers) still, especially at the commercial level. For one, they just don’t have the runtime. I briefly had an 80V blower. On its highest power – which is the only way it could come close to a gas-powered model, it was barely able to get all of the leaves out of the yard (we had a tree with leaves that had needle-like protrusions, which made them quite hard to dislodge), and lasted about 10 minutes per charge.

If you don’t have sticky leaves, or are clearing primarily hard surfaces like a deck, then absolutely, battery-powered is the way to go. But if you’re a commercial operator who is driving tools more or less non-stop all day, it’s going to be a hard sell to have to have a minimum of N*2 batteries (at $150-200 each), plus the downtime of swaps, plus having to run a generator on your truck constantly to charge the off-duty batteries.

EDIT: Sibling comment below linked to a Stihl model that appears to offer an hour of runtime at full tilt. It’s also $2400 for the unit / battery / charger, tbf, but it at least has the performance.

xxs8• 2 years ago

A whole hour of runtime would be mean 1C discharge. 80V (which is likely 72V, but in the US it's ok to label the max voltage rather than the actual one) is made of 20 Li-Ion batteries in series. Lets say 2 in parallel, so total 40 batteries. I'd go with 3Ah per battery (could be more for 21700) and around 2Kgs weight. For 1h work that's ~430W of power which is rather under powered.

That fast charger (say 30min to charge) for this thing would be quite a thing to witness with over a kW of power draw.

About Stihl, it uses a 36V battery, so 10 Li-Ion in series. Which is half as powerful. I can't see a capacity higher than 36V/6Ah from Stihl. Now, it possibly uses multiple batteries, however, the issue with charging still remains the same.

Running a generator would be louder than the device, so imo that's a moot point. I'd consider using a massive power bank and/or lots of pre-charged batteries to carry the day but not an inverter.Taking enough batteries to swap and charging them in off-hours seems the only sensible approach (albeit not cheap)

hedora2• 2 years ago

In San Jose, whenever someone proposes this (or at least getting the gas powered ones to stop dumping carcinogens), they’re non-ironically branded as racist.

People argue the battery powered ones aren’t good for professional use (short runtimes) but that problem was solved years ago. They also argue they’re too expensive, but that argument falls apart if you include engine maintenance and gasoline in the cost.

xxs8• 2 years ago

Unfortunately the article is very poor on details. The sound from the video is insufficient to tell.

Personally, I'd be quite excited to see what are the changes engineering wise. I bet it'd make a proper addition to BOLTR.

I still can't see how it'd be much quieter, as lots of the noise is just the air moving (and making sound waves), perhaps less vibrations, different frequencies due to different rpm?

planb• 2 years ago

"Our product takes in a full blow of air and separates it," said team member Leen Alfaoury. "Some of that air comes out as it is, and part of it comes out shifted. The combination of these two sections of the air makes the blower less noisy."

Sounds like they created a noise cancellation air channel.

xxs8• 2 years ago

I reread it - it says 40% reduction, that's -7dB... I can believe that part.

Edit: checked DCBL772X1 - it's listed 68 dBA - that's not necessarily loud, so if they managed -7dB, massive props to them.

regularfry• 2 years ago

There was a paper a few years ago describing something that sounds very similar: https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.02...

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

Basically, by splitting the airflow into a shorter and longer channel, the slight delay in the longer channel cancels out the most annoying frequency.

It would be interesting if they stacked two or three together to muffle even more noise.

addandsubtract• 2 years ago

I might be going deaf and losing high-pitched frequencies, but I couldn't tell much of a difference in the video example of before/after.

SV_BubbleTime6• 2 years ago

Because it’s 2db overall.

No camera is going to pick that up because no human is going to hear it.

They claim 37% reduction, but that isn’t true for human perceived volume.

mccrory• 2 years ago

Now if we could solve this for the rest of the lawn equipment, especially mowers and string trimmers.

xxs8• 2 years ago

Lawn mower robots do the trick quite nicely actually.

infecto4• 2 years ago

The switch to electric will help a lot in this situation. Unfortunately I don't think the equipment is good enough contractors yet.

deadbunny• 2 years ago

Maybe it's just a UK thing but I can't think of the last time I even saw a non-electric lawn mower. Even going as far back as the 80s they were the standard, just don't mow over the cable!

jchw3• 2 years ago

It's probably getting there given what Ego has on offer, but I think until it is downright better in at least some dimensions, it's going to be a hard sell. Right now it seems like it's more expensive, at best similarly powerful, and obviously batteries take time to recharge. I think it's gotta be niche for contractors.

That said, given how bad gas lawn equipment is for the air in a locality, maybe regulatory nudges are in order. I suspect if the incentives were right the rest of the problems would solve themselves.

actionfromafar4• 2 years ago

It will get there I suspect, the tools and batteries can charge in the truck en route. Easier to just fuel up the truck once instead of filling up little gas tanks all the time.

criddell• 2 years ago

If governments want to help the adoption of electric tools, they should mandate the use of standard batteries.

twoquestions2• 2 years ago

I love my battery powered mower and trimmer (wow there's so many names for that)! I can mow the lawn and come back in and relax with a quiet show or game!

haunter2• 2 years ago

We have a 1 acre garden. Electric gardening tools are just toys for this size. I'd love to use electric but nothing comes close to gas.

v7n• 2 years ago

I wonder if the efficiency is indeed unchanged, or as quoted in the article "keeps all that force". If so, and if the added weight is really minimal, I wonder if this could be applied to EDF aerial vehicles such as hobbyist RC planes.

lukas099• 2 years ago

I was hoping the video would show it actually blowing leaves.

luketollefson• 2 years ago

HN commenter with this exact idea 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20379490 haha. Good stuff

Kuinox• 2 years ago

It looks like the same structure.

StimDeck2• 2 years ago

Give that commenter some upvotes.

Also did you just pull this from memory?

lowercased4• 2 years ago

Won't help much until these are mandated by law, or.. we just wait for a couple generations to die out. There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them. Over time, the next couple generations may hopefully adopt more battery powered outdoor stuff (mowers, blowers, etc) because of environmental concerns, or... goodness - maybe actual sound concerns. But it's going to be another couple decades, I think. Yes, I live in a rural area in the US. Things ain't changing here any time soon.

HPsquared2• 2 years ago

Generally being a nuisance can be illegal, depending on the circumstances.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuisance

If there's a quiet option and someone deliberately uses a noisy one, could that be considered a nuisance?

lowercased4• 2 years ago

Not in rural areas. People shoot guns at 1am and... "god given freedoms" and "piss off back to the city y'all" and all that are trotted out anytime a complaint is made.

Again, it may change in another couple generations, but it'll be slow.

adolph• 2 years ago

Making something officially transgressive often makes the thing more attractive.

Is one supposed to avoid purposefully releasing diesel particulates by rapidly increasing engine speed? Yes and people sometimes still do it for whatever reason.

goda90• 2 years ago

I was out weeding my garden yesterday evening and there was some pleasant bird song around me. And the droning of a gas mower a block away. And someone zooming back and forth on their crotch rocket on the main street in the other direction. At least the mower sound probably wasn't intentional...

iwontberude3• 2 years ago

You should hear my electric makita, it’s loud as hell and sounds like a banshee from Halo.

Aurornis• 2 years ago

There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers. It's a fantasy escape world for them.

That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.

The lawn business people I know would love to adopt full electric fleets of gear. They aren’t sending their teams out with gas engines because it’s a “fantasy escape world”. They do it because gas engines are currently the only reasonable way to keep the crews running all day without spending thousands of dollars on batteries over and over again.

Current battery tech is hit or miss. The packs should be protected from over-discharge and last for hundreds of cycles, but in practice they got a lot of early failures. They also need extra packs to rotate while others are charging. At $100-200 per battery, they might be spending $1000 on batteries to operate a machine for a season, which would have bought them two gas powered machines and gas to operate them.

There’s also the issue of charging throughout the day. Getting a reliable charging setup that works on a truck inverter and getting crews to perfectly manage batteries throughout the day, including spares, is significantly harder than just filling up a gas tank.

Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.

n2e• 2 years ago

Assuming “a section of folks who enjoy loud engines” was meant to apply to your section of lawn business people who don’t is also uncharitable.

lowercased4• 2 years ago

You are talking about people working in a business.

I'm talking about neighbors living in rural/suburban areas.

EDIT: We have a lawn care guy. He does our half acre in under 30 minutes. Our neighbors who do it themselves - same half acre size - typically take 90-120 minutes. They'll just sit on a riding mower and let it idle for minutes, while looking up stuff on their phones. Or let it idle and go inside for a drink, while leaving it running. They enjoy riding around with a loud engine underneath, like a really slow motorcycle. This is not speculation, it's from talking to them.

The business people have an incentive to get in and out quickly - they can do more lawns that way.

The people who like loud engine noise have no such incentive. They have an incentive to have a lazy afternoon of lawn mowing.

datavirtue• 2 years ago

I have been running the best of the best in tools and battery tech: Milwaukee.

The blower and weed trimmer (especially) burn through very expensive batteries (XC8.0) very quickly. It is not a feasible replacement for even a moderate job. My yard is super small and I move quick and have learned to pull the batteries at 50% to keep from ruining them. But I have burnt up at least one $200 battery that will only charge to 75% now. That happened in the first season. Otherwise, performance is good.

mlrtime9• 2 years ago

I just bought a battery powered lead blower from Costco. It's my first one and it's awesome! I use it all the time for things I didn't think I would.

However, it is still very loud and doesn't last long enough for commercial use.

One instance recently, had a few very aggressive wasps in the garage (Son is allergic). In the past I'd use some chemicals, the leaf blower got them out in seconds, it's so powerful it blew them outside far enough they couldn't get back and just flew off.

paulmd• 2 years ago

this is quite a straightforward reality for many people and calling it a “fantasy escape world” and “uncharitable” is itself miserly and uncharitable, and classic HN rules-lawyering in a nutshell.

like yes people do like using loud power tools for the sake of using loud power tools, most people would consider them at least moderately fun.

tyingq2• 2 years ago

It sounds like the key part of the idea could apply to gas blowers, right?

astura• 2 years ago

That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.

It's neither uncharitable nor a projection. My dad is one of these - the loudness is entirely the point, by his own admission. He told me this. He intentionally buys the loudest most powerful/obnoxious tools he can rather than the most practical and dicks around with them.

My dad is also the laziest man on the planet and does ZERO housework. He only does lawn work because it's an opportunity for him to play with his toys.

The lawn business people I know

Nobody's talking about people with lawn businesses. Businesses will want to just get the work done and move onto the next client.

bluedays• 2 years ago

That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.

Not the OP but I would agree with you if I was not told explicitly by several people that they love being outside with loud gas powered engines. These people happen to be my neighbors. There's a culture around small gas powered engines. People grew up with them, and learned engine repair on them, which helped them build a career. I have used battery powered leaf blower and a battery powered weed eater, and I have been told "that's nicer than anything else I've ever used, but I just love gas engines".

mapt• 2 years ago

We need LiFePO4 packs, we need them at a +200% markup ($300/kwh) rather than a +900% markup ($1000/kwh), and we need them mounted in a frame based on good backpacking backpacks with a wire running along your arm to the tool.

npteljes• 2 years ago

Projecting all of this on to “fantasy escape world” is silly.

I kind of agree. How I see is that there's a lot of frustration in people in general, and many manage their internal turmoil by manifesting it into external stimulus. Many behave actively, organizedly anti-social ways, so much so that new words, Wikipedia articles have been created to describe the behavior, like "Rolling coal" or "Whistle tips".

Now, I think that these can be thought of as tips of an iceberg. The iceberg being unhandled emotional stress, a system that perpetually creates it, and the behaviors of people that handle it.

I agree that the business incentives are there to keep ICE around. ICE is mature technology, battery-powered are not, and since batteries have not coalesced or aren't regulated around a handful of standards, manufacturers use this to lock in customers into their own ecosystem, among other kinds of power struggles being present as well. I'm personally not confident that I can buy a replacement battery for a new device in 5 years for a fair price, as I expect that there is going to be a new battery standard, with which my "old" device will not be compatible with. So ICE makes a lot of sense still.

On another level, I think it's important to note that noise is power. It affects us on ancient, animalistic level. Loud noise means us danger, or at the very minimum something important to pay attention to. A low level of constant noise feels like safety. No noise is creepy, we better watch out. To be able to make a huge noise is powerful - people and animals usually have gestures explicitly for this reason, and it has been used in warfare too, both in the distant and close past.

So, people are sensitive to this power. Combined with the ability of increased mobility, or the safety that a metal chassis provides, it makes it an attractive way for people to feel like they are in power, or to reduce the powerlessness they feel in other parts of their life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_tip

robofanatic• 2 years ago

I have seen people riding loudest lawn mowers wearing noise cancellation headphones. Probably they just want to torcher neighbors.

zerkten2• 2 years ago

> That’s an awfully uncharitable projection.

I took this to mean my father-in-law, but not a paid business or situation where these things are a necessity. He is a lawyer who's worked remote since 2000 only leaves home for necessities and outside hobbies, but has all kinds of equipment including a tractor and snow plow. Of course, he has a ride-on mower and enough other equipment to start a landscaping business.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

There's a section of folks who enjoy loud engines. It's their jam, they love being 'outdoors' with loud gas powered engines, big trucks, riding lawn mowers.

That is the only reason leaf blowers exists.

eru• 2 years ago

No. Some commercial folks also use leaf blowers, and those people just use them, because they get paid to clear some leaves.

kristofferR2• 2 years ago

I don't understand this, isn't most of the noise coming from the air and not the engine in the leaf blowers?

dmd3• 2 years ago

No. Nearly all of it is the engine.

alamortsubite5• 2 years ago

It's both. This design focuses on quieting the airflow. From TFA:

The team started working last September. They hoped to improve an electric or battery-powered leaf blower, which is already much quieter than the notorious gas-powered ones, where the sound can carry over an average suburban block.

iwontberude3• 2 years ago

Leaf blowers are already mostly electric, and they are annoying as hell. People will take time to replace them, but I assure you they aren’t loved at all.

brequinn• 2 years ago

Curious - why dont people love them? I assume just not as powerful as gas?

spike0212• 2 years ago

I don't think this is nearly the same thing as people being obnoxious with their motorcycle or car exhausts.

What I'd really say is maybe we should rethink if blowers are even useful or necessary at all over the old broom and scoop.

Many times I see landscapers use them to simply blow dust and leaves everywhere, including into busy streets, rather than using them to try and collect all detritus into a single pile for collection.

If that's more commonly the case, then why use them at all?

kortilla• 2 years ago

This is a shitty take. Everyone I know who refuses to use battery powered landscaping equipment absolutely hates the noise and dealing with the gas engines.

The problem is that the battery stuff doesn’t compete on price/power if you’re doing basically anything more than a lawn measured in square feet.

bluGill4• 2 years ago

Battery stuff is just fine on the power aspect. However price weight kill you. Gas is light for the amount of runtime you get, while a battery is very heavy. A contractor will need more than $1000 worth of batteries to get through a day per person or $4 worth of gasoline.

haunter2• 2 years ago

We have a 1 acre garden. Electric gardening tools are just toys for this size. I'd love to use electric but nothing comes close to gas.

CalRobert5• 2 years ago

A higher end robomower can handle an acre

reustle• 2 years ago

You just aren't looking at the full set of options available then. The Stihl electric line is used by contractors and cities all around the world, and are incredibly reliable / strong.

ModernMech2• 2 years ago

These were my neighbors growing up. Chain saws, quads, backhoes, bulldozers, fire engines, school busses -- anything with wheels and big motors they would be running all day long. Every day during the summer I'd wake up at 8am to 3-4 quads being driven around outside my window by the neighbor kids, and that would go on all day long until sunset.

That actually wasn't bad though compared to moving to San Francisco, where they decided to carve a narrow chunk out of the side of a solid-rock hill right below my window. Jackhammering all day from 7am until 5pm. I bought a sound meter and complained several times that they had exceeded the sound limits but no one cared.

It really affected my wife, we had just moved to SF and she had no where to go while I was at work. She tried libraries and parks and such but there were too many homeless there and they harassed her. She has trouble sleeping due to mental health issues and she usually sleeps from 4am to 12pm, but she couldn't do this due to the jackhammering outside of our window that started at the crack of dawn.

This meant she didn't sleep at all for months, and she ended up having a psychotic break, for which she was hospitalized. She was sent to a hospital in Santa Clara, and I drove there every day to see her.

Anyway, all of this is to say that noise issues are serious to some people, and there's really no limit to how much noise someone can make. You can complain but nothing happens.

philbin2• 2 years ago

Earplugs really do work! Pay the money to get good ones.

techdmn• 2 years ago

As a car-person, gear head / petrol head, etc., this has always been somewhat baffling to me. I've always been in it for the speed, the exciting sensation of your body moving through space. Lots of things end up being kind of cool by association: fat tires, wings, loud exhaust, a lopey idle. But to me they were only interesting because of what they implied, something that can go fast. Some people add those things without being able to go fast, which I've always found distasteful, a thing frequently derided as "all show and no go". It took me a while to accept that some people really are in it for the noise. I can't really knock it, I'm getting a sensory experience that I enjoy but can't quite explain, and I suppose they are too. But keep it away from my house. ;-)

Once I was riding my motorcycle to work, and another guy rode passed me on his motorcycle. His exhaust was so loud it gave me a headache almost instantly. I can't imagine how much it must hurt to actually ride the thing.

omgJustTest3• 2 years ago

"Their design cuts the most shrill and annoying frequencies by about 12 decibels, which all but removes them, making them 94% quieter. The team reduced the overall leaf blower noise by about two decibels, making the machine sound 37% quieter." [1]

Somewhat upsetting here... I don't have a problem with people doing things like this and students need encouragement, but we are talking about shifting from the sound of a leaf blower to the sound of a vacuum cleaner [2]... in the best case.

One particular annoyance here: the sound emission must be from the end of the blower but also from its casing. I feel many products like these are cheaply designed, and the OEM could solve many of the nuisance issues with simple housing changes... or spending a few more pennies on the bearings or blades in assemblies. These are not OEM primary goals, as they are looking to save pennies in a lot of the parts in these designs.

JHU should make these comments!, and also offer their designs for free given these are public orgs using mostly public dollars... if the result is such a big deal, getting manufacturers to commit to sound reduction in licensing deals would be a true result!

https://audiology-web.s3.amazonaws.com/migrated/NoiseChart_P... [2]

rad_gruchalski2• 2 years ago

Try this one: STIHL BGA 86 Akku Laubbläser. It's shocking how quiet it is.

whiplash451• 2 years ago

mmm, the spec says 90dB [1] which is the sound level of a motorcycle at 25ft [2].

not amazing (at least on paper)

[1] https://www.stihl.de/de/p/laubblaeser-blasgeraete-saughaecks...

[2] https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/Training/PPETrain/dbl...

sokoloff2• 2 years ago

JHU should make these comments!, and also offer their designs for free given these are public orgs using mostly public dollars

JHU is private. It seems like this research may have been sponsored by Black & Decker, also private.

natemcintosh• 2 years ago

Yes, these mechanical engineering senior design projects at JHU are all sponsored by some organization or another, and the sponsor gets to keep the end product (and in this case also patent pending). Source: did a mechanical engineering senior design project at JHU 6 years ago (though mine was less successful, haha)

omgJustTest3• 2 years ago

"Johns Hopkins researchers' success in winning federal funding—which accounted for close to 87% of its 2022 R&D expenditure—enables them to pursue projects in an array of fields, from human genetics to artificial intelligence." [1] https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/01/05/nsf-higher-education-research...

Oh yes... "private" org using public dollars is more appropriate.

omgJustTest3• 2 years ago

(Also for those claiming JHU is private therefore not majorily dependent on federal funding, please read JHU website:https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/01/05/nsf-higher-education-research...)

KingOfCoders6• 2 years ago

I also have one, it's called a rake.

fkyoureadthedoc5• 2 years ago

Many people have an even quieter one, no yard, what's your point? What's so important about this statement that you had to be the 3rd one to make it?

KingOfCoders6• 2 years ago

If three people make this, then it should say something about a.) leaf blowers and how they are liked by bystanders b.) that this might be solving the wrong problem.

"you had to be the 3rd one to make it?"

With people making a personal attack out of everything, I wonder: Does this make you happy? How are those people in real life? Can't they discuss things without getting personal? (Oh and I see the irony of my comment, but I do consider this a meta-discussion)

PS: No I don't read every one out of 180 comments before I comment myself. Chapeau if you do!

Pikamander2• 2 years ago

The one I use is called "letting the leaves decompose naturally and accepting that certain areas will be mulchy".

Plus a broom to keep the sidewalk clean.

KingOfCoders6• 2 years ago

Tried that, but it's not working for me on the (small) patches of grass in our garden - I guess it depends on the climate.

ks2048• 2 years ago

People don't have time to do physical work like rake the lawn. They need to finish the yard work and drive to the gym to get some exercise.

KingOfCoders6• 2 years ago

Reminds me of the escalator to gym meme.

tao_oat• 2 years ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40374795 (posted 9 hours ago).

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

If this becomes popular, I hope they get a Nobel prize.

dsizzle• 2 years ago

Haha I came here to make the same comment

Scene_Cast2• 2 years ago

Whisper Aero is a startup trying to commercialize a quiet leaf blower. I don't think they're selling their product yet, unfortunately.

alberth• 2 years ago

HN 7-months ago | 199 comment

EDIT: why the downvotes?

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

Isn't it called a leaf rake? Frankly I never understood the popularity of leaf blowers to begin with. They are noisy, less effective than a leaf rake and very bad for health and back of the users.

It seems they exists only because people are stupid enough to think that something that makes noise and use a lot of energy would necessarily be better.

fkyoureadthedoc5• 2 years ago

less effective than a leaf rake and very bad for health and back of the users.

Citation needed. I can clear my whole yard with an electric blower much faster than with a rake. I also have no idea how holding a leaf blower would be bad for my back or health.

derbOac2• 2 years ago

There's also leaves that can't be raked because they're too small.

lotsoweiners2• 2 years ago

Raking leaves out of landscaping rock is a PITA. I blow the leaves and other debris onto the driveway and then sweep up. Easy peasy.

SigmundA• 2 years ago

Milwaukee just came out with a blower claiming 40% quieter then their last revision hard to tell if the students version is quieter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2NSBAe6bdI

klankschap2• 2 years ago

How about just leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.

vouaobrasil3• 2 years ago

Exactly right. It's asinine to blow leaves. They don't do any damage and they create habitats for spiders and insects. I hate poeple who want clean, empty mowed lawns, aiming for an ideal that is far away from nature. Sickening.

voidUpdate• 2 years ago

Wet rotting leaves on a footpath are very slippery, so its helpful to be able to blow them off the footpath before they get all mushy

sgarland2• 2 years ago

I don’t want a natural habitat in my yard. That’s what the woods behind my house are for. I want a clean, relatively flat, and soft field of grass that my kids can run around barefoot in.

I’m all for natural beauty, but most people already live in urban or suburban environments. What’s the point in pretending when you’re surrounded by asphalt and brick?

sandworm1014• 2 years ago

> It's asinine to blow leaves. They don't do any damage and they create habitats for spiders and insects.

Leaves are a problem in many areas, be them footpaths, roads or even railways. And good luck trying to maintain a golf course by just leaving the leaves out to rot on the grass.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58783589 "Dry ice to help cut train delays caused by leaves on tracks"

jordanpg2• 2 years ago

A canopy of unblown leaves can cause damage to the surfaces underneath through mold or mildew. In some cases, this damage can be effectively permanent if let go long enough.

OtherShrezzing• 2 years ago

In some cases, this damage can be effectively permanent if let go long enough.

I have no expertise in leaf or ground quality. If this is the correct, even in very rare cases, over the quarter-billion years or so that trees have been shedding leaves, should the entire planet not be barren wasteland by now?

What's the process by which leaf damage is undone over very long time periods?

hypertexthero• 2 years ago

Agreed.

I saw a bumble bee come out of hibernation from inside an old leaf out in the garden recently. Amazing experience. The leaves also make good top soil.

If you need to move leaves, use brooms. Or leave the leaves be, assholes! :-D

mlrtime9• 2 years ago

Have you ever considered it's just a name and it's actually used on more than just leaves?

Or was the post sarcasm? Poe's law.

SamBam• 2 years ago

Err, they're mostly used on leaves. At least in my state.

rascul• 2 years ago

Leaves can kill off whatever is growing beneath them and they can pose a safety issue in areas where people walk.

phillipcarter2• 2 years ago

Rakes exist.

It's (often but not always) slower work, but it's quieter.

richardlblair• 2 years ago

I couldn't agree more. We spend so much time cleaning the inside of our home, then we go outside and clean up nature. It's messed up

SV_BubbleTime6• 2 years ago

So, you don’t have a large maple next to your drive way, do you?

If I didn’t have a leaf blower, my driveway would be solid ice in the winter, mud in the spring and fall, and dust in the summer.

riversflow2• 2 years ago

Yup! And deciduous trees planted next to your house are an excellent green way to decrease heating and cooling costs. Shade when you need it, not when you don’t. This is the exact reason we blow leaves too.

darknavi• 2 years ago

Even in the fall driving on the sea of leaves from our maples would slide you around if we didn't clean them.

ajmurmann2• 2 years ago

Are leaf blowers only a North American thing? When I grew up in Germany I hardly ever saw one. When I moved to the US they were everywhere. Not sure if they became popular around that time or if it's just more common in the US. When and where I grew up everyone also took care of their own garden, so I suspect that played a role as well

Carioca• 2 years ago

Also never seen one here in Brazil FWIW

hedora2• 2 years ago

They’ve become more popular.

However, I think the idea that everyone needs to have a gardener loudly and poorly tend their 1/16th acre lot at random times is a problem unique to California suburbs.

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

Yeah I have to think it's the same phenomenon that makes people buy large 4-wheel-drive pickup trucks that they rarely use for anything but commuting and getting groceries. The same phenomenon that makes people buy a commercial-style zero-turn Dixie Chopper to cut their suburban lawn once a week. Big? Loud? Smokey? Gratuitious in every way? I want it!!

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

They have become popular around here. People use them to push leaves out of sidewalks.

Looks like they are way faster than unpowered tools.

swatcoder• 2 years ago

I share that sensibility, but it makes more sense in spaces that have already acheived a "wild" equilibrium.

In many cases, existing crafted landscapes can't handle the acidity/moisture-trapping/etc of decaying leaves. So you're really advocating for people to give up on expensive, considered, laborious projects that exist for functional or aesthetic reasons. Even if there are alternatives that are comparably functional or beautiful, what's there is there already and a lazy wilding doesn't necessarily lead to one of those agreeable alternatives.

It's a bigger ask than your phrasing suggests.

jabroni_salad• 2 years ago

I did that my first year of home ownership (because I am lazy). When I spring came around and the snow melted, all of the ground cover had turned into mud. No living plant life at all. I had to replant it all.

Something tells me that was not your desired outcome. Now I remove the leaves.

sevenf0ur2• 2 years ago

What you actually mean is leave the leaves so they blow away and become your neighbor's problem.

klankschap2• 2 years ago

How about leaving leaves for what they are. Just leave them and move on with your own life.

mlrtime9• 2 years ago

Have you ever considered it's just a name and it's actually used on more than just leaves?

Or was the post sarcasm? Poe's law.

barfbagginus2• 2 years ago

If they are serious, then they are making the equivocation fallacy - arguing by using a word in two different ways and hoping nobody notices the mistake.

But it's likely they are doing this as a pun, where readers are supposed to notice the equivocation, and find it funny or annoying. For example we can imagine a lazy husband saying "they're called leaves, so that is why I'm going to leave them for tomorrow!" This is not a serious attempt to equivocate the two meanings of "leave" - it communicates non willingness while also causing laughter or annoyance.

An obvious equivocation is not usually an effective argument. But making it a pun can win points with a good humored audience, because they find it funny. Funny arguments can influence opinions even though we know they are nonsense.

TLDR; when people mix word meanings secretly to confuse people and win points, it's equivocation, and that's a morally bad argument and is usually unacceptable. But when people mix meanings blatantly to win points by being funny, it's a pun, and that may be acceptable in non-serious conversations.

cityofdelusion• 2 years ago

I tried this when I first got a house. The leaves decompose and you end up shoveling a layer of mud off your waking surfaces. It also becomes incredibly slippery when wet. A dense layer of waxy oak leaves can be like walking on ice.

digging2• 2 years ago

Hm, residential walking surfaces are easily swept with a broom though.

chiefalchemist• 2 years ago

Tuesday I mowed the lawn. Yesterday morning, I got up, made coffee, grabbed my shop broom and cleaned up out front. Not a leaf blower insight.

Sure it took a couple of extra minutes but I also got some light exercise. I understand why a lawn service uses a leaf blower. I don't understand why my neighbors do.

danielohrlund• 2 years ago

If it works I'll buy one for my neighbor as soon as they're available.

dagurp• 2 years ago

I hope they'll put this on hand dryers too

linhns• 2 years ago

Can this idea be adapted to vacuum cleaner? Would appreciate that since my head starts to spin when I hear one.

hyping9• 2 years ago

It's called hearing protection. People wear it while operating heavy machinery, shooting guns, or being at rock concerts. Might not hurt to keep a pair around your home.

kreyenborgi2• 2 years ago

https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1582154037700399104 moxie marlinspike invented one a few years ago

ZeroCool2u• 2 years ago

This was the first thing I thought of when I read the headline. I'd be curious to hear his thoughts on this student design.

sandworm1014• 2 years ago

A quieter leaf blower? No. They did not do that. They found a way to quiet an existing leaf blower. Adding a silencer to a gun doesn't mean that you have invented a new gun.

> They workshopped more than 40 versions of the solution they finally settled on: an attachment that cuts the machine's noise almost like a silencer on a gun or a muffler on a car.

And for all the people screaming about electric v. gas, this isn't about that. This device looks like it could be used on any leaf blower, although the difference is probably less dramatic on a gas-powered model.

pferde• 2 years ago

Cool, now outlaw the loud ones in populated areas.

Next step, the same thing with the obnoxiously loud motorbikes in cities.

unpopularopp• 2 years ago

Awful lot of NIMBY people on HN, that always surprises me

shiftpgdn• 2 years ago

Hating on a universal annoyance isn’t NIMBY behavior.

WaltPurvis2• 2 years ago

Can someone explain to me what "quieter" means in this context and/or how it's calculated? I don't understand what they mean when they say reducing the noise by 2 decibels made it 37% quieter -- it wasn't making only 5 decibels of noise before, was it?

>Their design cuts the most shrill and annoying frequencies by about 12 decibels, which all but removes them, making them 94% quieter. The team reduced the overall leaf blower noise by about two decibels, making the machine sound 37% quieter.

anarticle• 2 years ago

Decibels are log scale, reducing by 3db cuts energy by half.

tomoyoirl• 2 years ago

Decibels are logarithmic; a 1 dB reduction in sound is ~26%.

SV_BubbleTime6• 2 years ago

But that is NOT the same as human perceived volume.

Less 37% energy is not 37% less volume to humans.

You won’t be able to tell the difference in volume except for the tone which could be more or less pleasing depending on the frequency they say they got 12db on.

gumby• 2 years ago

Leaf blowers are pretty terrible for the yard, so anything that makes them more acceptable will just make things worse.

Bad because they blow away topsoil, leaving a hard pack behind that absorbs little water. Just walking around my neighborhood it’s clear who doesn’t use a leaf blower: the dirt is crumbly and the plant life better. If people have pots as well you can see the difference between the two.

Also bad because they blow away all the decaying leaf matter and bugs from under the bushes, again hardening the soil and losing a;l the advantages of bugs perforating the soil and drawing nutrients below.

Of course you can try to fix this by adding chemicals…ugh

toss1• 2 years ago

Yes, it can be a real problem, that over-use. You can also fix this by using judicious aiming and throttle control and still be more efficient and easier on the exosystem vs raking.

But you must first understand the issue and want to solve it. Unfortunately, most people, even "lansdscape pros" do not understand it, or want to take the extra care to do it.

Source: my wife is extremely knowledgeable, educated, and passionate about the plant and soil ecosystems you describe, yet I was able to adjust technique to satisfy her scrutiny in a reasonably short time. You just have to get a clue and want to act on it. And yes, we've both seen more abuse done with a leaf-rake approach too. It's not the tool, it's the user, tho these blower tools make it easier to abuse at scale.

unglaublich• 2 years ago

Doesn't matter. We have quiet vacuum cleaners, quiet cars, quiet motorbikes, and quiet mowers, but that doesn't trigger the feeling of primal power that many buyers search for.

foobarian• 2 years ago

I got an electric leaf blower mostly to avoid the noise and partly to avoid gasoline engine issues (a Kobalt 80V blower). What baffles me is that here the designers had a chance to make something truly quiet but instead they blew it and used a super-high-RPM motor-powered narrow turbine placed inside the pipe. It sounds like a dental drill amplified through a set of loudspeakers.

I would kill to get a commercially designed blower powered with a large squirrel cage driven by a low-RPM brushless motor. I'm sure they exist by now and I imagine they are glorious. I'm not sure what these students did but if I was doing that project today that is the first thing I would try.

Mountain_Skies3• 2 years ago

Makes me wonder if they intentionally kept some noise to combat consumer perception that it was weaker than gas models.

swayvil3• 2 years ago

Good point.

If you want a good accurate model of human psychology, look to world of marketing.

There is a similar noise-is-strength in vacuum cleaner sales.

loceng3• 2 years ago

Elon Musk at one point once suggested Tesla would make a quiet leaf blower - due specifically to the noise.

I wonder if Tesla perhaps has a whole bunch of technologies they're developing incognito in the background - or if he's perhaps being limited for some artificial reasons?

It may just be a market size issue - and cities passing bylaws to disallow gas powered, only allow electric under a certain dBs is the fix; and for some reason aren't caught under existing noise pollution-nuisance laws.

willsmith722• 2 years ago

Is that really what people want?

Leaf blowers to me are possibly the least interesting, least appealing way to use modern tech

To clarify, as a research project, cool. We can probably use any new developments elsewhere. But as a tesla product, just why?

Delmololo• 2 years ago

It's probably just not a market anyone really cares.

The person who does it a few times a year just buys something cheap.

The professional needs to have it running the whole day. No cable and just noise means that the boss saves money and the worker can just use ear protection.

riversflow2• 2 years ago

I have had the twin battery Makita model for several years now. It’s a fabulous tool, basically functions how you describe I believe. Puts out a max of 61db on high. Expensive, but we already have makita tools, and it made a hated chore essentially not exist because its so convenient, fast and easy.

BurningFrog• 2 years ago

"instead they blew it"

I see you!

chmod775• 2 years ago

What baffles me is that here the designers had a chance to make something truly quiet but instead they blew it and used a super-high-RPM motor-powered narrow turbine placed inside the pipe.

They didn't change anything about the blower. They made an adapter you plug on the front that tries to cancel out the the worst offending frequencies. Like a silencer, but for leaf blowers. It's the red thing you see on the pictures.

flanbiscuit• 2 years ago

I think foobarian is referring to is:

I got an electric leaf blower mostly to avoid the noise and partly to avoid gasoline engine issues (a Kobalt 80V blower).

...and not the content of the post. I was a little confused as well though so you're not alone. But I'm pretty sure that's what they meant.

wannacboatmovie• 2 years ago

(a Kobalt 80V blower). What baffles me

I don't understand. You opted to buy the inexpensive store brand tools (Kobalt is Lowe's house brand) and now you're complaining that shortcuts were taken and it didn't exceed requirements or your expectations?

I don't walk into Harbor Freight and expect Snap-On tools.

sameerds• 2 years ago

If I am not mistaken, the first sentence mentions what the GP commenter has, while the second sentence talks about what's mentioned in the article. You seem to be conflating the two.

EDIT: s/argument/article/

MisterTea• 2 years ago

You'd be surprised with the quality of some of the latest harbor freight tools. They are still shaky with some stuff but they aren't the "hazard fraught" of 5+ years ago.

mistermegabyte• 2 years ago

The Kolbalt 80V line was made by Greenworks, which makes excellent products for pros. I have the Kobalt 80V blower and it is an excellent blower (loud) and is just a rebranded 80V Greenworks. Not Harbor Freight cheapness for sure. I also have the 80V mower and trimmer and they too are just rebranded Greenworks tools. Excellent products overall.

sandworm1014• 2 years ago

> instead they blew it and used a super-high-RPM motor-powered narrow turbine placed inside the pipe.

Because it is a handheld tool. It cannot be heavy. If you want to shove lots of power through an electric motor then that motor has to be either very heavy or very fast. The same is true for turbines. And a lighter consumer product will generally be cheaper to manufacture.

johndough• 2 years ago

Another reason for smaller and lighter fans is the lower moment of inertia, which means faster spin up and spin down. Unfortunately, these frequent spin ups annoy me to no end.

SoftTalker3• 2 years ago

They are made. Of course a hand-held blower that has enough air velocity to do its job is going to make some noise, but I walked by a landscape maintenance guy outside work yesterday, he had a battery-electric blower and it was much quieter than the old two-stroke gas blowers they were using last year. I didn't note the brand but the casing was green. Maybe Deere, but it wasn't quite the Deere shade of green so I don't know. You know what's quieter than any blower? A broom. But not as fast.

debunn• 2 years ago

Greenworks offers battery powered leaf blowers - might have been one of these? https://www.greenworkstools.com/collections/leaf-blowers

Kirby64• 2 years ago

Likely Ego. Ego makes probably the most premium electric only power tools.

xyst• 2 years ago

Cool invention. Will the students get paid royalties or is the university and private company taking all of the royalties/profits?

kingcai• 2 years ago

This is cool. Kudos to the team too - I feel like this is what engineerings all about.

cruffle_duffle• 2 years ago

Naw. Leaf blowers should be straight up banned. They are pointless and a massive source of obnoxious noise pollution.

Seriously though, what do they even do?

lupire3• 2 years ago

They move leaves off of surfaces where they are a nuisance, to a disposal area.

bluGill4• 2 years ago

So does a rake or broom. It needs more manual labor to do it that way.

handsclean2• 2 years ago

There’s some other “quiet leaf blower” on the market, and all they’re doing is reducing power and telling you special nozzles make up for it, which of course they don’t. This article omitting performance measures is a red flag for me. What’s the CFM impact? It’s 40% quieter, but is it also 40% worse at blowing leaves?

stevage2• 2 years ago

It says like 10 times in the video that equal performance was the KPI.

handsclean2• 2 years ago

Timestamp? I’ve watched the video twice now and read the whole article and can’t find one mention of it. The closest is one statement of “it keeps all that force still there”, which is vague, definitely not the same thing as CFM, and sounds like the sort of statement that’s compatible with the aforementioned nozzle lines.

stevage2• 2 years ago

You kind of get the impression that manufacturers never even bothered to try to make them quiet before.

ajmurmann2• 2 years ago

While I'm usually very free market, I think this is a case where we have such a high negative externality that we need regulation. Everyone is annoyed by leaf blowers, but the tradeoff for users, especially commercial, of paying the extra cost isn't worth it to them. I don't think we should ban them, but have a maximum permitted noise level.

giovanni_or2• 2 years ago

I love the sound of a leaf blower. Makes me sleepy.

grugagag• 2 years ago

A rake is also an option

lotsoweiners2• 2 years ago

Not when you have gravel landscaping and a yard full of shrubs with small leaves. The rake will work a little on the larger branches but won’t do a good job of cleaning up.

dontupvoteme• 2 years ago

The innovative power of the hangover

the_real_cher• 2 years ago

Moxie Marlinspike tried this. Pretty decent try.

https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1582154037700399104?lang=en

geocrasher• 2 years ago

What I loved about this is that all of their prototypes were with a stock leaf blower with *3D Printed* attachments. This really shows the value of the rapid prototyping that 3D Printing has allowed.

It also shows that any of us could have done this with enough time and effort. And I don't mean literally any person- but there are a LOT of YouTube engineering channels that could likely have tackled this, had they been asked to.

Mountain_Skies3• 2 years ago

There are a lot of ongoing attempts in the 3d printing community to replicate the Wilson airless basketball. I expect there will be similar efforts in to produce something similar to what the students created. Wonder if they applied for a patent and if that would prevent clones from being made.

cchance2• 2 years ago

The funny part here is they say product, but in reality as soon as this ships someone will hit it with a hammer, figure out the internal layout with some calipers and we'll have an STL lol

StimDeck2• 2 years ago

Can’t we just look for the patent application rather than wait two years for a concrete product?

pradn2• 2 years ago

There's a lot of value in coming up with a clear problem statement and giving it to the right people. We see this with DARPA, at a much bigger scale.

pradn2• 2 years ago

There's a lot of value in coming up with a clear problem statement and giving it to the right people. We see this with DARPA, at a much bigger scale.

A lot of the value in engineering leadership is in making sure the right problems are being solved.

piokoch• 2 years ago

Leaf blowers are one of the most idiotic inventions ever made. What is good about moving throwing leafs from place A to place B, where they will be rotting in the same way. Blowing with all other dust and trash. Luckily they got recently banned in Warsaw.

modeless10• 2 years ago

We don't need quieter electric leaf blowers. We need to ban the gas ones, with no grandfather clause. Not just for the noise pollution but the local air pollution. It's crazy the volume of air that can be ruined by a single gas leaf blower, far worse than modern cars, and they are inescapable in cities.

riffic2• 2 years ago

a buy-back program would be a good first step.

kjkjadksj4• 2 years ago

They’ve been banned for years in some cities. The issue is there is zero enforcement.

modeless10• 2 years ago

Yeah a ban in a suburb of a city doesn't work because they are brought in by landscaping companies not based in that suburb.

SOLAR_FIELDS5• 2 years ago

And the other underlying problem implied there is that electric leaf blowers are only viable for household use. They are just so completely impractical for commercial use that no one will ever use them.

ericmcer• 2 years ago

I am so tired of noise and air pollution having 0 enforcement in cities, but if a car is parked for 15m too long in a metered spot they are ready like hawks to swoop down and dispense a $60 ticket.

I was eating lunch at a restaurant few weeks ago and a parking enforcer was ticketing a car right next to us. A few feet past the car three dudes on motorcycles were revving their engines and blasting music at the stop light. No one could talk and the air smelled for a couple minutes after they left. It just seemed so wrong who was getting punished and what cities prioritize in that instance.

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

DC seems to be doing pretty great with our ban. Theres some loud-ish electrics but it's still 1/8th the horror that it used to be; it used to be that someone two blocks away was still creating a living hell, but now it's really just someone across the street with a particularly poor model.

Next up on my list, construction sites! We've had a small condo going up nearby, wood framed, and the generator is loud as fuck all the time. They use so little power though. A hybrid setup with 1kwh battery would let that thing rest 95% of the time. Ditto for their air compressor; a even modest sized 300 PSI air receiver tank would radically improve the neighborhood for nearly no cost.

grecy2• 2 years ago

I'm always shocked that small ICE equipment don't have catalytic converters, or any emissions reducing devices. Especially given the operator is actually holding the thing and the exhaust is just a foot or two from their face, surely the health consequences are capital letters bad.

xkqd4• 2 years ago

Usually the crews running them are more focused on feeding their families over their own long term health.

I’m still surprised when I see some crews have hearing protection.

BenjiWiebe• 2 years ago

Some do. https://www.stihl.com/catalytic-converter.aspx

odiroot• 2 years ago

They have been a bad idea from the start. Who thought an unbalanced, two-stroke internal combustion engine with a minuscule exhaust (and no muffler!) was a good idea for a tool operating in residential areas.

caseyohara• 2 years ago

It’s the power-to-weight ratio. Two-stroke engines are used in blowers, chainsaws, trimmers, and edgers because the power:weight ratio is far more practical for handheld tools than a four-stroke engine.

Motorcycles and snowmobiles are mostly four-strokes these days because the increase in weight isn't a big deal compared to a chainsaw or trimmer.

coolspot• 2 years ago

Not just for the noise pollution but the local air pollution.

Also, leaf blowers make a lot of dust airborne, which can’t be good to inhale.

divbzero• 2 years ago

It’s not only noise and air pollution for the neighborhood, but also a matter of safety for the operators.

datahack2• 2 years ago

They are already banned in California.

The rest of you need to catch up.

I for one am stoked to have a quieter electric one though of course I’m behind your sentiment!

But for Calfironians, it’s already better for the environment with all these small engines phasing out, and now it’s quieter too? Slick.

modeless10• 2 years ago

I'm in California and the ban is only on sales, not use. There has been no difference in practice, yet. And my city also has a citywide ban on use, but there's no enforcement, so it's pretty much a joke all around.

cchi_co• 2 years ago

But more sustainable alternatives to gas-powered leaf blowers are needed I think

craigmcnamara• 2 years ago

Have you heard of a rake?

ElijahLynn• 2 years ago

The video shows the electric leaf blower before, and with their invention after. And it's a big difference, and makes the electric even quieter. I think we definitely need this even for electric!

Yay, for quieter cities!!!

Gibbon1• 2 years ago

I think leaf blowers kick up enough dust that they should just be banned outright.

unsupp0rted• 2 years ago

The first time I woke up in North America to the sound of a neighbor with a leaf blower, I asked myself how this could possibly be legal.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

You should go to the beach and relax with a two-stroke jet ski.

nisse72• 2 years ago

or on a hike with a UE Boom

Log_out_• 2 years ago

It creates dustdevils that clean up your yard.

DasCorCor• 2 years ago

Put them up for the Nobel.

bibanez• 2 years ago

The Nobel of Peace, of course

rangledangle• 2 years ago

To me the noise was 10% of the problem. Who wants to breathe in what lies on the ground? Just lick it instead.

baerrie• 2 years ago

Thank god, i am so sensitive to all lawn equipment noise, this is a huge public good and I think there should be more restrictions on this class of machine, gas and electric

indigo0086• 2 years ago

Not one leaf blown.

pnielsen2• 2 years ago

The madlads they finally did it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eo2uq5k1O0

nikolay• 2 years ago

I watched years ago a presentation at the City of Irvine, California, from a scientist that all these small engines (leaf blowers, mowers, etc.) pollute California's air way more than all cars combined. Also, the leak machine oil. To me personally, leaf blowers are bad not only due to their exausts, but because they also make all kinds of bacteria and pollutants airborne, most specifically, fungus, feces from animals, large particles, etc., which end up in our lung eventually. To me leafs are not a big issue. I'd rather have grass with decaying leaves then grass and leaf blowers!

UPDATE: It seems that California has banned the sale, not the use of gas-powered small engines [0]!

[0] https://www.cityofirvine.org/environmental-programs/lawn-equ...

tmnvix• 2 years ago

I still recall a tragicomic leafblower event that made the local news when I lived in Australia.

A caretaker was killed when a tree fell on him while he was using a leafblower during a storm. The added irony was that he was doing this at 'The Lodge' - the official residence of the Australian Prime Minister which had been vacant for some time because the Prime Minister refused to live their (preferring a residence in Sydney). So an entirely unnecessary event all around.

moribvndvs• 2 years ago

I welcome even quieter electric, but the two stroke engine on most blowers (particularly the pack blowers) is the real problem and they are EVERYWHERE. Every day from sun up to sun down from March until December my neighborhood has a nearly constant drone and reeks of two stroke gas. It has gotten so much worse over the past 7 years I’ve lived here, and sharply worse since pandemic. I dunno if it’s attributed to more affordable pack models becoming more popular with homeowners or increased usage of landscapers, but it has become an extreme nuisance.

I have a handheld electric to help with a couple of hard to reach spots. While it’s not as quiet as I wish, you can’t (well, least I can’t, from my testing) really hear it after about 75 to 100 feet. The surrounding neighbors’ blowers can be heard over a quarter mile away when I’m walking around the block.

It has ruined enjoying time out in the backyard, especially during the fall which is my favorite season.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

love the ingenuity but this reminds me of the "pen vs pencil in space" myth. while the residents should not be really using them in the first place, i hope local municipalities would acquire quieter options for maintaining public spaces.

Students invent quieter leaf blower

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